20+ Stunning Hero Images for a Creative Website

Sadly, most web designers get this strategy all wrong. They often confuse hero images with background images and use free stock photos as hero images. There’s a big difference. A hero image is supposed to be something that you use to showcase your service or product to your website visitors in a more attractive way. […]

What Needs to Be in Your Style Guide? (And How Do You Enforce It?)

Brand Overview Creating a style guide from scratch can be pretty intimidating if you’ve never done it before. First timers can benefit from finding a guide they like — MailChimp has one of the best ones out there and makes it available under a Creative Commons license — and using it as a model for […]

7 Tips for Effective Use of Icons in Design Projects

1. Add Visual Interest Not every image is going to be a breathtaking landscape. Sometimes images just fall short. Fun iconography can help add more interest to these somewhat uninteresting photos. Use icons to enhance the content of the photo, provide an extra bit of information and provide an interaction cue. Take the example above […]

Bushel: A Better Way to Manage Your Apple Devices

What is MDM? Mobile Device Management (MDM) allows you to keep track of mobile devices, smartphones, tablets and computers with software. Most MDM is employed through third-party software (something that does not come on your device) that helps you manage hardware, settings, and apps. For a business with multiple devices and users, an MDM solution […]

7 Tips for Delighting Users With Great UX

1. Personalize It One of the biggest trends in web design is personalization. Users want their experiences to be just for them when they visit a website, play a game or shop online. An interface that “knows” the user creates a definite wow factor. Consider some of the most visited websites in the world and […]

How to Customize a Resume or CV Template

Best Practices Creative professionals often engage in an internal debate before starting on a resume project. Should it be simple and straightforward? Or a creative showcase to suit the personality of the designer? The answer is somewhere in the middle. Your resume should be creative enough to show off your design chops, but should also […]

10 Ways to Simplify Your Design

1. Focus on Calls to Action Your website should have an end goal for every user to do something. That goal should be obvious to every person that lands on the design. Calls to action need to be clear, large enough to see and in enough locations so that users never get to far away […]

Tips for Using Contrast to Enhance Readability

Color Contrast Lettering must stand out from the canvas. It needs to have a presence that draws the eye. There are plenty of ways to create color contrast, but the most popular is black text on a white or light canvas. And it’s popular because it works. (The opposite combination works equally well.) When placing […]

How to Install & Apply a Lightroom Preset

Adobe Lightroom Basics Lightroom is Adobe’s photo tool. The portable software is available on any device for Creative Cloud users (probably a large number of us at this point). What’s great about Lightroom is that it is made for editing photos. You can work with Camera Raw images, adjust the way stock photos look, mix […]

15 Best Moodle Themes of 2017

Edwiser RemUI – Moodle User Experience Theme Edwiser RemUI is a one-of-a-kind user-centric Moodle theme. Not only does it change the homepage interface on the front-end, it revamps the dashboard and internal pages in the backend too. Edwiser RemUI introduces unique layouts with improved navigation and customization options, as well as offering an elevated learning […]

Designing an Infographic? 5 Elements You Must Include

1. A Data Story A good infographic starts with a solid story. This is often rooted in some sort of data that is visualized to make it more understandable. Before you fall into the I-don’t-have-any-numbers-trap, data is not just number crunching. Data is any information that can be used to make a comparative analysis or […]

How to Design One-Tap Microinteractions

Animate a Button Do you remember the first time you noticed the Facebook like in Messenger? You tapped the “thumbs up” icon and it grew in the box to the person you were chatting with. Did it make you smile? Did that little bit of movement give you a bit of delight? Simple animation, before […]

7 Common UX Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Content

1. Unreadable Typography There was a short phase where designs were packed with novelty typefaces. While that is not an issue in itself, it does present a problem when the words are difficult to read. (What point are words in a design if they user can’t figure out what they say?) When looking at novelty […]

30+ Best Photoshop Actions of 2017

Premium Photoshop Actions Bundle Price: $79 We’ll start the list with an all-in-one bundle that comes with 520 Photoshop actions for adding effects and automating all kinds of enhancements in Photoshop. It includes several types of actions, including effects for wedding photos, HDR, matte, vintage, and much more. Double Exposure Photoshop Action The double exposure […]

What Are Design Ethics? (And Why Are They Important?)

What Are Design Ethics? Design ethics are a tricky business. Ask five different people what it means and you are likely to get five different answers. Generally, that can be culled down into two basic ideas: Design ethics establish behaviors and actions which are generally accepted in the profession. Design ethics help raise the standard […]

11 Handy Resources to Help Build a Website in 2017

Inspiration Every great website starts with a good concept? What do you want your design to look like? It starts with finding just the right bits of inspiration to jumpstart the creative process. 1. Muzli Muzli is a self-named “designer’s secret source” for daily inspiration. Now that you know the secret, you can browse all […]

50+ Best Lightroom Presets of 2017

230 Pro Lightroom Presets Price: $25 We’ll off start the list with a massive Lightroom presets bundle that comes with 230 professional presets, that includes portrait, urban, retouch, nature, HDR, hipster, vintage presets and much more. 167 Essential Lightroom Presets Price: $25 Yet another bundle of Lightroom presets that includes all the essentials you need […]

Flex Your Design Muscles With These 10 Creative Exercises

1. Design a Quote Everyone has a few inspirational mantras that serve as a perk-me-up when things start to drag. Combine one of those messages with great imagery or using beautiful typography and create a social media background image or desktop wallpaper. (These designs are really popular on social media and many of them are […]

7 Rules for Creating a Simple Design

1. Set One Goal Per Page The beginning of a simple design starts with a goal for the project and specific goals for each page of the website. Each page should lead users to one action, excluding the navigation and footer. This could be anything from clicking a link, entering information in a form, watching […]